The magic of vanilla is 3 things imo.
If there is classic plus, these MUST exist for it to retain the “magic” of vanilla. Otherwise it’s just retail 2.0
I can definitely relate, Kaziix.
I was a little confused by the OPs assumption that their “easiest features to implement that definitely would not change the game” would degrade that familiar look and feel for Era and damage the user experience. As someone has already pointed out, talking to people to form groups is an Era trademark and “push button get dungeon” would really detract from that.
To clarify my point on graphics—imo WoW graphics went downhill starting the day (and this was in Vanilla!) that a ridiculous animation was added to warrior’s retaliation skill, which essentially rendered a core skill with a 30 minute cooldown completely worthless in PvP.
I wouldn’t be opposed to crisper graphics in classic+, but I absolutely don’t want it to turn into an overload of obnoxious animations, as retail is.
What’s the purpose of requiring a quest line?
Couple things.
Like tier .5, would make certain dungeons relevant again. This benefits people lvl 58 through green geared 60s who are more likely to get epic geared peeps running dungeons with them.
Also, it would just be cool and fun.
Also, great opportunity to add more lore and character development.
Most importantly, it is in keeping with the spirit of vanilla, where cool things require work, instead of being handed to you.
The coolest thing I did in classic was completing tier .5. Finished grinding out 8/8 tier 0 the day before AQ dropped. Took 3 weeks but completed tier .5. Was so pumped. Was a huge goal of mine in Vanilla that I didn’t come close to and I was so stoked to complete it in classic. Woke my family up in the middle of the night to tell them the joyous news that after 15 years I finally got breastplate of valor. They weren’t impressed, but I was.
The player base would never stand for gold sinks large enough to effectively slow inflation.
I love how some people advocate for taxes ingame.
Well I don’t think dual spec is just a cool feature. If it exists, it’s mandatory, even with a cooldown. So it could have a cost to unlock but not super expensive and I agree having a new questline is cool but can’t we do that anyway and still have the mandatory feature?
Making mandatory things into a gold sink feels bad. Mounts costing 1k+ gold when making 100 gold can be hard feels bad. You need an epic mount to be useful in BGs, so making a new character was a headache because you had to deal with the mandatory 1k gold cost of making them viable.
You may be right. To be honest, I’m just spitballing ideas. I think the longer the cooldown and the harder to attain, the less the social penalty for not having.
But maybe there just shouldn’t be any dual spec at all. I am also amenable to that.
No way. The classes being faction-exclusives is a Classic cornerstone.
How is it a classic cornerstone? Just because it’s been that way? Just because it seems cool? How do any of those reasons outweigh the pros of having alliance shamans and horde paladins? Maybe in #nochanges classic wow, but not in classic+.
Cross Faction classes are retail features, just like flying, purchaseable boosts, buyable mounts, same-faction battlegrounds, and the Token. It diminishes the impact of player choice when choosing a faction and leads to homogenized gameplay.
There’s flying in wotlk so how exactly is that a retail feature? wotlk is nothing like retail. Just because something exists in both classic and retail doesn’t just automatically make it a retail feature that turns the game into retail.
Wrath and TBC are retail WoW. Neither were ever Classic.
as long as they dont do retail models. retail gnomes and blood elves, are just not good. the hairstyles are great but the bodies, faces and animations are not good.
I’ve seen the opinion that TBC and Wrath are retail, but they really aren’t. Retail started with Cata.
The classic character models perhaps don’t need a complete overhaul. It does need more faces, hairstyles, colors, and perhaps an increase in the pixelarity ;p
Shaman and Paladins being faction specific is really important, it even has an important impact on raiding and PVP. It also is just more true to the Warcraft people loved, these are hero units for Orc and Human respectively.
Personally I hate the new graphics and models, specifically the Tauren. More than the models is the animations. I get it some people love them, would not play this though. I can’t play my old main, an accomplished Tauren Warrior, for 10 minutes without feeling sick about what they turned him into.
Dual Spec is an interesting one. It would benefit classes like Mage, Rogue and Druid more than say Warrior or Priest. I’m not against it, but it also isn’t needed for everyone. As a Warrior I can tank as any spec with the right gear equipped up to a certain point where a different spec would be better against geared DPS who can play. Feral Druids, Ret Paladins, Elemental Shaman and Shadow Priests all make okay -to- decent raid healers with a good healing set equipped up to a point. The game is just tuned differently in Classic than later expansions where you spec to your role and that’s that.
It is a PITA to spam chat looking for group some times so I do get the appeal of a dungeon finder that just does it all for you. RDF is one of those things that sounds great and makes getting into a dungeon super easy so on the surface it seems awesome. The hidden cost is that nobody talks, you didn’t have to PVP to get to the instance, you didn’t have to go pick up quests and share them, you didn’t have to have unlock the flight point, you can just sit in a major city, and so on. It belongs in a later version of the game with a massive number of levels to get through, catchup gear, daily and weekly dungeon chores etc. This feature is coming soon to Wrath Classic, and with already high levels of toxicity in that game I don’t expect this to improve things.
TLDR: balance, convenience and then graphics killed the game for a lot of people including me.
you still had to level thru the old world the original way. there’s no old world flying in tbc. you could still do the quest chains for your epic pally and lock mounts. stitches still kicks butt in tbc. you still have to gather the quests for dungeons. they arent just there waiting for you, in tbc. etc.
Blaming the whole “nobody talks” on RDF is really stupid, especially considering that Classic Wrath does not have RDF and people still don’t talk in Heroic++ dungeons. It’s not RDF, it’s just people nowadays. It’s like you people don’t play the game, you’re just undercover devs or people who haven’t played in a long time.
Make a character on the Classic Era, either Whitemane or Mankirk Alliance cluster and go hit some dungeons.
It is not “people nowadays”, it is a difference in the game that is hard to categorize but obvious. I doubt you will but you should.
but shadowpriests cant raid because they run outta mana too fast in vanilla. their secret sauce in vanilla leveling is tied to killing blows and a raid boss has way too much hp for that, thus the tbc changes.